Stanley Kubrick e me

I’ll admit I approached *Stanley Kubrick e me* with skepticism—how many more Kubrick books do we need? But within 20 minutes, Alberto Lori’s narration had me hooked. His delivery is *just* rough enough around the edges to feel like D’Alessandro himself is speaking, not some polished actor. The real revelation, though, is the book’s structure: it’s not a linear career retrospective but a series of vignettes that jump between Kubrick’s films and D’Alessandro’s personal life, mirroring the director’s own non-linear thinking. The pacing drags slightly during the *Eyes Wide Shut* sections (Kubrick’s later years feel more melancholic than revelatory), but the early chapters—especially the tales of D’Alessandro’s resourcefulness in tracking down obscure props or calming the director’s paranoia—are pure gold. What I appreciated most was the lack of hero worship. D’Alessandro doesn’t shy away from Kubrick’s flaws: his coldness, his hypocrisy (like demanding total control while micromanaging others’ lives), or the way his perfectionism bordered on self-sabotage. The production quality is top-notch, though I wished for more archival audio clips or ambient sounds to break up the 13-hour runtime—this is a *talky* memoir, and even Lori’s excellent performance can’t fully mask the occasional lull in momentum. Still, for anyone curious about the *human* machinery behind Kubrick’s films—not just the myth—this is as close as you’ll get to the truth. Just don’t expect a love letter; expect a wry, clear-eyed portrait of what it means to enable genius.